[6-2-09 - Addedum for all you students who stumbled upon this post by typing the title quote in a search engine: Desdemona says this in Act one, Scene III, to her father. She's talking about her duties to her father versus her duties to her new husband, Othello. I don't think her character is given the credit it deserves - given the time and the prejudice, she shows remarkable loyalty to Othello. Check out this link for Sparknote's analysis of her character.]
We're discussing "Othello" tomorrow. This is actually the first time I've read the play although I had been familiar with the general themes (having seen 2001's classic, O, staring Mekhi Pfeiffer and Julia Stiles). I'm having fun gathering images of various Othellos, from Paul Robeson to Lawrence Olivier to Laurence Fishburne. Shakespeare has such universal themes that it can be reinterpreted again and again through the years, and each time the audience views it through its own lens.
I found a version of Othello at the library that came with an audio cd with snippets of various productions. Track two is a side-by-side reading of Othello's first long speech in act one, first by Paul Robeson (he first played Othello in England, 1930, and played him in the U.S. only after World War II), and the second by an actor from a 1987 production in South Africa. That production was considered a "protest play" - apartheid was still the law, and the arts community was boycotting until the racist policy was lifted.
Here's one of the few moments that appear to give real clue to Iago's behavior. He says:
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.
Othello, 1. 1
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.
Othello, 1. 1
Shakespeare's Othello was an outsider. He was a Moor, leading a Venetian army but still not seen as fit to marry one of its own. In the twentieth century, it was enough to have his skin color be different to show that outsider status. But in the twenty-first century, I can only imagine that directors are dreaming up new way that will continue to shock audiences. Instead of racial differences, maybe highlight Othello's Arab background. Or maybe they'll make Othello a woman or transgender (I haven't looked around too much - maybe someone's already done this!)
Although this recent New York production of Othello looks exquisite:
[Director Arin Arbus] gets out of Shakespeare’s way, in other words, but this is only the reward of much intelligent care and hard work. You get the sense that each moment in the play has been thought through, line by line and even step by step, with the result that every scene achieves its purpose with a trenchant simplicity.
I'm trying to write and post each day. Eventually something good will come to me, and I just want to make sure my fingers are ready for it.
3 comments:
A move to emphasizing the moor as an outsider because of his religion might in fact be seen as cycle back in time. People better informed that I am have and continue (I think) to fight over the degree to which Othello's blackness drew on existing racial hierarchies (or helped create them) to make him a startling hero. But I feel little uncertainty that Othello's religion more than sufficed to make him exotic and an objectionable match to a Christian wife. Such crazy things happened in Venice---that globalized hub of its day.
Right, right. I agree. I'm just now dipping into the Othello scholarship. Shakespeare's awesome. Until this last century, Othello, usually played by a white person with or without darker makeup, was usually portrayed as an emotional and long-suffering man. And when he started being portrayed by black actors such as Paul Robeson, it became easy to see him as a victim of prejudice or cultural misunderstanding.
But it's become somewhat difficult to accept that a hero could be someone who kills his wife on suspicion alone, and maybe that's not the way he should be thought of.
The theater gasped when Robeson kissed his Desdemona in the post-wwii production. I just wonder what would make audiences gasp today.
Re: August's last question, Not a damn thing.
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